Dialogue with the ideological communities

In a letter to the chairmen of the CDU/CSU and SPD parliamentary groups in the German Bundestag, Volker Kauder and Thomas Oppermann, and the chairwoman of the CSU parliamentary group, Gerda Hasselfeldt, the President of the Humanist Association of Germany, Frieder Otto Wolf, has reminded the governing coalition to implement the dialog with the ideological communities agreed in the coalition agreement. In the agreement from November 2013, the coalition declared that it would “intensively cultivate the dialog with the Christian churches, religious communities and religious associations as well as the independent ideological communities”. This was the first time that the participation of communities of non-denominational and non-religious people had been explicitly anchored here. Frieder Otto Wolf described the systematic discrimination of non-denominational and non-religious people in the Federal Republic of Germany as the main topic of discussion. For example, he referred to the recent decision of the conference of the heads of government of the federal states on the new ZDF State Treaty on March 26, 2015 in Berlin not to include any representatives of non-denominational people in the broadcaster’s television council in the future either. According to Wolf, this clearly shows that the Federal Republic “is still a long way from implementing the requirement of equal treatment of religious and ideological communities”, as stipulated in Article 140 of the Basic Law (in conjunction with Article 137 (7) of the Weimar Constitution). The ZDF Television Council is a “symbolically important, but in the overall view only a small area” in which people who do not belong to a religious denomination are discriminated against. While the regulation of many areas of society in which non-denominational people are disadvantaged is the responsibility of the federal states, others are the responsibility of the federal government: including labor law, consideration in institutions of public and political dialogue, pastoral care and counseling in the armed forces and aspects of statistical recording (census). Frieder Otto Wolf called on the parliamentary group chairmen to start the dialog agreed in the coalition agreement “in order to implement the principle of equal treatment in our Basic Law in a modern way”. The letter also stated that the members of the association “currently wish to pay particular attention to the special situation of asylum seekers who have to fear for their lives in their home countries due to their non-religious beliefs or beliefs that differ from the religion of the majority population. These people – just like asylum seekers of Christian or other faiths – should find support and advice services tailored to their specific needs in the Federal Republic of Germany,” says Wolf.